Thursday, June 30, 2016

AI builds e-learning at 10% of cost, in minutes not months, with higher retention and recall

Paying 20k
an hour for e-learning content, over many months, that is laden with noisy
pages of text/graphics, punctuated by low retention multiple-choice questions?
AI can help you to build content at 10% of the cost, in minutes not months,
with higher retention and recall.

Problem

The problem
with the traditional, online learning, bespoke content paradigm is the tools.
They push vendors and buyers into producing content that has ten major flaws:

1. Expensive to produce

2. Too long to produce

3. Difficulties with SMEs

4. Media (but not mind) rich

5. Weak Multiple-Choice

6. Low effort learning

7. Pavlovian gamification

8. Impersonal learning

9. Low retention and recall

10. No practice

1. Expensive to produce

I ran a
large, bespoke, content company. It was very successful but that was back in
the day and used the tools of the day. Yet the content produced today costs
and looks much as it was 30 years ago, despite the fact that computers are
faster, better, cheaper and online. Why does it still cost 20k an hour to
produce e-learning content? Because we’re still in the old paradigm of
traditional authoring tools and a mindset besotted with appearance, not
learning. Imagine reducing that cost by 90% through a radically different
approach, using AI and automation. You can.

2. Takes too long to produce

E-learning
projects can take three to six months or longer, with lots of process and angst. It’s
a highly iterative process, and takes a huge amount of management, definition,
design, development and delivery time to produce anything. Imagine doing all of
this in minutes, not months. You can.

3. Difficulties with SMEs

By far the
most difficult step in the production of online learning is getting the
knowledge and expertise from the mind of the subject matter expert (SME) across
and into the course. It’s a tricky process and often full of angst and
recrimination. Imagine taking SME content – any document, PowerPoint or video - and turning it automatically into online learning. You can.

4. Media (but not mind) rich

As
computers have allowed us to deliver media richexperiences, we have, often blindly, ignored the research by
Mayer, Clark and many others, showing that media-rich is not always mind-rich.
This has resulted in an often garish concoction of movement, graphics, cartoons
and animation, that inhibits, rather than enhances learning. There’s maybe not
enough ‘edu’ and too much ‘tainment’ in ‘edu-tainment’. We need to pay
attention to the research, reduce cognitive overload and focus on the learning.
Less is more.

5. Weak Multiple Choice Questions

Long the
staple of online learning, yet when in real life does anyone choose an option
from a list, as if the mind was a simplistic ATM, choosing from menus? Besotted
with MCQs, we have produced low-effort, low-retention and low-recall learning.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Use more effortful, open response learning. The
research shows it is superior.

6. Low effort learning

The illusion
of mastery is what much online learning produces, the feeling that you’ve
learnt things through light-touch exposure and occasional selections from
lists. In truth, real learning is learning by doing, real effort, not page
turning and exposure to fancy media. Recent reseach turns traditional onine learning on its head. Make the learner make the effort – that’s
what results in high retention and recall. Read to remember.

7. Trivial Pavlovian gamification

Does gamification play Pavlov with learners? It so often does, collecting coins, trivial games that just put more cognitive effort into the mix. Or, you can focus on the sort of gamification that
Demis Hassabis uses in AI learning – repeated deliberate practice. Don’t make
it too easy to sail through, allow learners to fail, make them work, make them
do things until they get 100% competence…. That’s true gamification.

8. Impersonal

Good online
learning is always a balance between directed and open-learning. There needs to
be structure, often quite directed, but there also has to be the opportunity
for support, expansion and curiosity. Allow the learner to explore by providing
automatically generated links out to extra content. Make your course porous.
This is possible with AI.

9. Low retention and recall

Over the
last ten years, evidence has emerged (summarized in Make It Stick) that
effortful learning matters, that open response is superior to multiple choice
and that deliberate practice matters. We have the ability to use AI to embody
and deliver practice based on contemporary learning theory.

10. No practice

The once
only, sheep-dip experience was the target of online learning, with its anytime,
anywhere offer. Yet online learning simply replaced one type of sheep-dip (offline)
with another (online). The fact that they rarely delivered opportunities for
reinforcement and practice, was the same in both camps. AI, the algorithmic delivery
of simple and effective online learning, through effortful and deliberate
practice, can change this.

Conclusion

We can now,
for certain types of leaning, produce content at 10% of the cost, in minutes
not months, with higher retention and recall. We can avoid the trap of whizz-bang
graphics, weak MCQs and Pavlovian ‘collect the coins’ gamification. The new
approach, using AI, creates e-learning which is effortful and allows the
learner to expand on their learning with access to external resources and
further opportunities for practice. It’s called WildFire.

WildFire
takes any document, PowerPoint or video and turns it into online learning,
within minutes, using AI. More than this, it uses effortful open-response
learning to increase retention and recall. Beyond this it automatically curates
links to content beyond the course and, in real time, can create online
learning from this content. It is unique. For more information see the WildFire website.